Good totally miserable Thursday to you all.  Miserable because we have cloudy skies and a mix of sleet, rain, snow, and freezing rain predicted.  We are hibernating for the day.  We hope our car won't be encased in ice by the end of this mess.  Update: we had a brief bit of sunshine but the clouds have moved back in.  The rain, snow, etc., is still coming in.

Hey, Kay.  I think you got some of the snow that chose to miss us.  I will certainly stop by and check out the video.  I loved the Old Fart's Rant.

I have been following the accounts of the whooping cough epidemic this year.  I did note the few mentions that indicate the vaccine isn't as effective as it has been in the past.  I have wondered why and strongly suspected strains of resistant viruses.  Anyone who has had basic biology should not be at all surprised at that kind of development.  Researchers have some evidence that such resistance is behind the epidemic.  Why we seem to think our technology solves problems forever I don't know.

Chris Cillizza has an interesting post this morning: Are we in the end times of trust in government?Certainly we have entered a period of increasing distrust of government--Federal government especially.  However, I disagree that there have been no identifiable events to cause the erosion of trust.  There have been a lot of them frequently over the last decade and a half.  He noted the high opinions of the Federal government in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 but fails to mention the events that followed.  How about the revelations of how the Bush administration lied and manipulated to get its war in Iraq before the more justifiable action in Afghanistan was anywhere near finished?  How about the grand promises Bush made in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and how pathetic the rebuilding has been?  I remember a couple of disaster movies which portrayed FEMA heroically and they were believable.  Now--such a portrayal would evoke laughter not applause.  Remember the too-big-to-fail banks?  Guess what--they are bigger too-big-to-fail banks today.  And the promised regulation of the financial industry?  Financial industry-1, government regulators-0. We have paid into social security and medicare with the assurances that they would be there--but now we are told that that was never really assured.  I won't even mention how our government has been leading the charge to eviscerate the rule of law and the Constitution.  You can fill in that part of the story your self.  Tell me--what is there left to trust?